Petition updateEdinburgh Council to reinstate "No Dogs in Cemeteries" rule that was in place pre-CovidWeekly Update No:4 – 9th March 2024
Andy LeesEdinburgh, United Kingdom
Mar 9, 2024

Hello everyone

Welcome to the fourth of our weekly updates, informing you of what steps we have taken in our campaign this week, and any notable developments.

Firstly, the usual weekly roundup of figures.

This petition was lunched on 30th January 2024. Which means it has been running for 39 days at the time of writing.

At the time of writing, we have 1157 signatories, the petition has been viewed 11,522 times, it has been shared 662 times, and it has had 23 very kind promoters who have contributed £90 to promoting the petition link to a wider audience – we thank all our signatories and promoters from the very bottom of our hearts.

We list some more ways you can help us at the end of this update.

What has been happening over the past seven days?

1: New Facebook Group - No Exercising Dogs In Edinburgh Cemeteries

We launched a new private Facebook group on Thursday evening, called “No Exercising Dogs In Edinburgh Cemeteries”.

This Facebook group is a gathering place for all our supporters, whether you are from the original “I Love Morningside” Facebook thread, have seen our two petitions, or became aware of us through social media.

It is ONLY for those who wish to support our campaign to get Edinburgh Council to revisit their new Cemetery Management Rules that were passed on 16th August 2022, and address the issue of selfish dog owners who use Edinburgh cemeteries as dog exercise yards.

If you do not agree with our stance, this is NOT the group for you. It took less than one day for a supporter of the counter petition to try lying and cheating their way into our group – a “dirty trick” indeed.

More of that in our “Misinformation Monday” post.

We have had a fantastic response already, and it is so good to see many of you becoming members. Not even 48 hours old, and we have 62 members.

You can join the group by clicking on this link:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1479741686087660/

2: Scottish Parliament Petition - Update & Press Coverage

Our Scottish Parliament petition got some publicity this week, even if it was from The Daily Express. There are some poor journalistic standards on show here, they refer to Paul as “Mr Walker” at points.

You can read the article here:

“'Ban dog exercising in cemeteries' as grieving dad urges Holyrood to create new law protecting graves”  https://t.ly/QyJY2

If you were not aware of our Scottish Parliament petition, it is to:

Pass a law making exercising a dog in a cemetery an offence

Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to pass a law making exercising a dog in a cemetery an offence punishable by an on-the-spot fine for infringement.

You can read and sign the petition here: https://petitions.parliament.scot/petitions/PE2087

As far as the process of “what happens next” with a Scottish Parliament petition, we note that the petitions can be looked at over several meetings. Committees will not close a petition until they have all the information they need.

Once a petition has been submitted it will be looked at by the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee. The committee may look at it once, or several times. The Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee can also refer the petition to another committee.

The committee will look at our petition and decide what it is going to do. It might decide to:

  • get written information or hear from the Scottish Government, other organisations, or people
  • write to us for more information or to invite us to talk to the committee about the petition
  • “refer” (send) the petition to another committee
  • recommend actions for the Scottish Government
  • ask for a debate about the petition in the Chamber
  • close the petition

When there is a Scottish Parliament election, the “session” of Parliament ends. At the end of a session a committee can decide to keep a petition open. If it stays open, it can be worked on again in the next session.

So, it’s a waiting game…it could even span parliament sessions.

We may very well not be successful, and we are prepared for that.

At the very least, it gets the issue of cemeteries being used as dog exercise yards on the radar of elected officials and the public, as demonstrated by the press starting to pick up on it.

3: Ongoing contact with Edinburgh Councillors, MSP’s, and MP’s

We continue to engage with Edinburgh Councillors, particularly The Culture & Communities Committee at Edinburgh Council, MSP’s, and MP’s.

To date, we have personally written to:

  • 41 Edinburgh Councillors
  • All 10 members and the Convener of the Culture & Communities Committee at Edinburgh Council
  • 13 MSPs
  • 4 MPs

We continue to get very helpful and supportive replies from all the above on regular basis. Our first meeting with Council staff is not far away now, in the latter half of March, and we are busy preparing for that.

4: Petition updates this week

We published a couple of interesting updates this week, in case you missed them.

Let's talk about easily accessible green spaces in Edinburgh... https://t.ly/5falu

This one is very interesting. We had no idea about the partnership between Edinburgh Council and “Fields in Trust” – an amazing and worthy initiative, which really shows there are LOADS of green spaces available to Edinburgh residents to exercise their dogs.

An honest chat with a dog walker… https://t.ly/ldHeR

An honest chat with a dog walker Andy had on Reddit. Backs up a couple of suspicions why some dog walkers like to use cemeteries to exercise their dogs, often off-lead. Read as a companion piece to the accessible green spaces post above, it raises some serious questions.

All good information for our case to Edinburgh Council.

5: Freedom of Information Requests

We have submitted a further eight FOI requests, taken our running total of FOI requests submitted to 35.

We are still waiting on data coming back, however submitted a very interesting one this week around Fixed Penalty Notices and Enforcement Officers to Edinburgh Council this week…stay tuned.

6: Misinformation Monday

Lastly, yes…there will unfortunately be another “Misinformation Monday” post this coming Monday. More time wasted; however we need to call out this infantile nonsense.

In case you were unaware, our “Monday Misinformation” updates are where we respond to any instances of misinformation, insinuation and blatant lies that are directed at our campaign from any source.

This week we are adding an extra category – “dirty tricks”.

If you missed our first one, you can read it here: https://t.ly/zk5dN

This Change petition platform only allows you to post one update a day. We would rather use these updates to deliver news, developments and opinion pieces to you, our supporters, rather than wasting valuable time and effort replying to what comes across as childish misinformation and accusations.

Hence why we will only post a response to these once a week, on a Monday.

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Getting Edinburgh Council to revisit the Cemetery Management Rules, or the Scottish Government to consider a new law, is not going to happen overnight.

It will take time (we now know at least six months before Edinburgh Council will consider looking again at their Cemetery Management Rules, around June 2024), hard work, engagement with elected officials, building a strong case, and people power from you good folk.

Nothing is ever set in stone. Rules are there to be challenged, and when deemed appropriate, changed through the democratic processes available to us.

We are committed to the long haul, whether it is six months, one year, two years or longer…and we can only do it with your help.

Thanks again for your support, have a lovely weekend,

Paul & Andy

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